High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

We were both shouting now. Shouting fights were very rare in our marriage.

“Now you know national security secrets I swore not to divulge. I had to tell you because you don’t trust me!”

Re-crossing the room, she stood before me, one hand on her hip, her eyes now wide and full-on angry violet.

“I’m going for a walk. I need to take a break from this.”

Lindsey was almost always preternaturally calm. Not now. The tone in her voice was boiling.

She quickly slipped on her shoes and headed to the door.

“I never doubted you. Not for a second.”

“Right.” A sardonic half-shout.

“Lindsey, please. Please don’t…”

The door closed and I spoke the last word of the sentence to myself.

“…leave.”

Chapter Eleven

Later, I reflected on how a lover’s quarrel never takes a logical course and for each of us, a perilous combination of fissile materials—shame, jealousy, and regret—was waiting to create a destructive chain reaction. Later, I would wonder why, why I agreed to accept the star from Chris Melton, and boil it down to one prime motivation: fear. Unreasoning fear for Lindsey. I was ambushed and made the bad call. I was usually good under pressure. Not this time.

But that was later.

Now, I stewed for maybe thirty seconds and stood up.

Outside, it was full dark, moonless, and most of the neighbors had their lights off. But I could see Lindsey, thanks to her white blouse. She was on the sidewalk almost a block away.

She had already crossed

Third Avenue and was past the judge’s house. He and his wife sang in a band.

The night held no band noises, barely any sounds at all. A bell from a light-rail train clanged two blocks east on Central, the direction Lindsey was heading. If you listened very carefully you could hear the continual grotesque moan of the Papago Freeway to the south.

The street held no FBI watchers, no reporters. Not one car was parked at the curb in our block.

I wanted to run after her but stopped myself. It would only reignite the argument. I started walking east slowly. Maybe I would catch up, maybe I would walk off my own brew of anger, confusion, and neediness. I needed her to understand why I took that file, took that oath.

This would be a good time for one of those business cards from Peralta to turn up and tell me what the hell to do.

I watched as Lindsey reached the gate and wall that closed off Cypress from cars at the end of the block. Pedestrians could walk through openings that lined up with the sidewalk. The wall ran nearly the length of the mile-long historic district. It was one of the horrid changes forced by the neighborhood association—I called it the Willo Soviet—to gain its support for light rail.

The result made the neighborhood, where streets had always run straight through to Central, and when this part of town was much more crowded and busy, into a “gated community.” At least on one end.

The gate across the street supposedly allowed emergency vehicles to come through if need be. But one day a fire truck had stopped and the firefighters had asked Lindsey if she knew the “code” to open the barrier. There was no code. It was a damned locked gate.

The goddamned walls and gates made me angry every time I saw them. If I wanted gates and walls, I’d move to the suburbs.

Lindsey didn’t like walking through the Wall of Willo, either. “I always wonder if somebody is waiting to mug me on the other side.” She had said this more than once.

At least an ornamental light had been placed beside the sidewalk entrance on Cypress. It illuminated Lindsey clearly as she stepped through and disappeared on the other side, where First Avenue ran north and south. A block beyond that stood the open arms of the mid-century Phoenix Towers on Central Avenue.

Steps on the grass made me turn.

And there she was.